Frank Seravalli

Daily News Staff Writer

UPDATED: Brian Boucher will start in net tonight for the Flyers against Atlanta. Also, Nick Boynton will be scratched and Erik Gustaffson will be in the lineup.

EARLIER:

ATLANTA -- Chris Pronger was disappointed.

“It sucks,” Pronger said in a conference call with reporters on Thursday morning for the first time since his hand surgery on Tuesday.

“But a player knows his body well enough to know that it’s not responding to treatment after two weeks. It would progress during days off and get weak again after games.”

Dr. Tom Graham inserted a small screw in Pronger’s right hand on Tuesday morning in Cleveland to repair a small fracture and strengthen the area.

Currently, Pronger is back in Voorhees, N.J., at the Flyers’ practice facility and is in the early stages of rehabbing the injury.

The real test will come on Sunday, when the Flyers return home from their three-game road swing, and the bandages are removed from Pronger’s hand. It is then, he said, that he will be able to begin moving the hand around.

In some ways, Pronger said he is lucky. He is not lucky in the sense that he went a whole two weeks between his initial MRIs and x-rays and the CT scan that ultimately revealed the break with precision, but that he can continue to keep up his skating stamina.

A hand injury, after all, doesn’t affect your legs.

“I have to use this time wisely,” Pronger said. “This is different than when I had my foot surgery, I can get back out on the ice and get my skating legs back.”

Pronger’s timeline, currently scheduled at 3-to-4 weeks, would have him returning midway through the final week of the regular season. That would enable him to play two or three games before the playoffs begin in mid-April.

“That would be nice,” Pronger said. “You always want to be a part of the team.”